


& i will witch all wild things to my palms

by Sylvesterelle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Dark Stiles, Derek is a Tender Thing, Human Derek Hale, Hunter Stiles Stilinski, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-04-04 14:50:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14022597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvesterelle/pseuds/Sylvesterelle
Summary: The one where Stiles is a wild, dark thing and Derek loves him, still.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that's been stuck in my head for months and itching to get out there. I'm considering expanding it, so let me know what you think, and if you'd like to see more of this in the future.
> 
> For now, here's a vignette of Stiles, all sharp teeth and torn fingernails, and Derek soft, unsure, and so full of love he aches with it. 
> 
> Title from 'Distillery' by Maggie Woodward (whose chapbook, Found Footage, is available through Porkbelly Press!)
> 
> Content warning: blood, implied violence

Sparks fly up as he drags his bat along the concrete, the same orange-red as the lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Sinfully long fingers pull it away, and he tilts his head back to blow clouds of smoke into the night air, the moonlight playing off the pale line of his throat.

Stiles is a wild, dark thing and Derek loves him, still.

Stiles kisses him with blood on his mouth, and Derek is never sure if it is his or someone else’s. Whether Stiles had bit down with a sharp canine till the blood welled up, pressing the taste into Derek’s mouth, or if he had wet his mouth in someone else’s veins, some poor sucker who turned down the wrong back alley, glanced a little too hard at the wrong boy, so entranced by the shorn hair and innocent dance of moles across his cheek that they missed the spark in his eyes and the fire in his smile.

Derek doesn't fool himself; he knows he isn't the only one. Knows he isn't the first or last person to drag his begging hands across Stiles’ skin, breathe the smoke from his lungs. Not ever in his life, maybe not even in the day.  

But sometimes - sometimes, Derek thinks there might be something more.

Something in the way Stiles rests his forehead against Derek’s collarbone to catch his breath, letting his eyes shut as he turns his face closer, using Derek as a momentary shield. Against what, Derek doesn't know.

But he wants to.

Wants to know everything about Stiles. Where he comes from, where he goes when he leaves. What he’s thinking about in those moments before he opens his eyes and pulls away.If he’s thinking of anything, or just existing in some silent space, a million miles away even as they’re pressed together, sweat-slick and burning with heat.

Wants to know what he looked like as a child, before the scars that curve over his shoulders were etched into his skin. Wants to know what he feels like without bruises blooming from his veins, tender spots that make him hiss when Derek brushes against them, then arch into the touch, chasing the pain.

“There are things in the dark, Derek, things that need hunting. And I’ve always been a good shot.” Stiles told him one night, when Derek had been come-dumb and dizzy enough to ask.

“But don’t worry – they won’t touch you. I won’t let them,” he murmured, lips flush against Derek’s, something dark and sharp and delicious in his voice sending shivers up Derek’s spine.

But then he pulled away and left, just as quickly as he arrived - the light too dim for Derek to read the look in his eyes, or notice how his gaze lingered just a second or two longer than usual before closing the door.

Sometimes, Derek thinks he’d give anything in the world to have him stay the night. To see what he’d look like at dawn, wrapped in Derek’s sheets. If he’d relax in sleep, the lines around his mouth and eyes softening into something younger, more vulnerable, or if he’d stay tense, ready to wake at a moment’s notice.

If he’d let Derek curl around him, shelter him with his body, hide him within his arms.

He lets out a bitter laugh at the thought. Like Stiles will ever need somebody like Derek to take care of him - Derek can’t even take care of himself.

No, he should consider himself lucky for having even this small part of Stiles, be grateful for whatever he chooses to give him. Should stretch each second with Stiles into infinity, lick the blood from his lips and press devotions into his skin, savor each moment like it’ll be his last.

Because he knows, sooner or later, it will be.

_You grin and there’s blood on your teeth._

_You grin and there’s blood in his mouth._

_You grin, and you laugh, and you feel rich with the way the acid burns in your veins and how his eyes look in the light, burning with the same instinct to push, and prod, and stab at each other until one of you breaks._

_You like how the fight feels, dancing across the line and into the deep-dark-do-not-touch-do-not-pass-go._

_You think your love is greater because of this._

_But just because you're brave enough to bite at someone’s neck doesn't mean you're strong enough to let the blood live peacefully in their veins._


	2. Chapter 2

He learned, of course he learned.

Couldn’t help but to learn, finding him like that after coming home from work, his battered head resting against the kitchen cupboards and blood stagnating on the tile below. There was a jagged edge where the soft shell of his ear once felt Derek’s lips and watercolor blooms of fresh bruises outpacing untouched skin. His breath sounded wet, wrong, accompanied by the slightest flinch with each inhale—what would be a scream in any language but his own.

Even barely conscious, he had tried to play it off, giving a laugh that was more blood than air. But Derek understood. Understood that the fight that lived in Stiles’ eyes had given way to something darker, something broken, something infinitely more sad Derek was afraid to name.

But he understood that Stiles had come here, to Derek’s house, groping in the darkness for the solace that Derek had longed to give, but had no reason to suspect was desired. After all, Stiles was the strong one. The one who left while Derek was sleeping and turned away when he got too close, sensing the questions blooming on his lips.

But the time for that has passed.

Derek has learned what Stiles is, and what that being has cost him—continues to cost him—every day. Knows the years of his life he’s paid in exchange for a debt of rage, enacted in the flesh of unspeakable things, things that would as soon suck the blood from your veins as raze a city to the ground.

In a way, he's always known. The secrets he'd kept just beyond his teeth, his skin, the dark of his eye, sensed but never reached. Not until now.

Even so, there remains a silence. Derek could wash the blood from his back and wrap his hands with gauze, drift in the smell of smoke left in his bed and learn to fear the slip-shadows on the wall, but Stiles seems still to call him to silence. To warn him with the set of his shoulders and the curve of his jaw that what Derek needed to say, he was not ready to hear, might never be ready to hear.

But Derek can’t take that chance, can't afford the silence he begs. Each night with Stiles in his bed is borrowed time, a caesura snatched against its will from a war Derek can never know. And he knows in his bones, as he has always known, that one day all that will be left for him is the memory of the boy with torn fingernails, his bloodstains in the sink.

So he tells him. Tells him when he’s asleep in Derek’s bed, smelling of antiseptic and curled towards him in the night. Traces it on Stiles’ skin with the tips of his fingers, pressing the truth of it into him. Calling to him always, even when he can't listen, even when he's not there.

_I never want you to be alone again, not for a minute. I never want you to believe there is nowhere else to turn, no one with you, no one to carry the load. You have my house, my heart, my hands, take what will serve you. They have always been yours._

_You’ve been alone so long I think you’ve forgotten how it feels to be a part of something, how it feels to reach across that great divide and find solace in someone else. To let them find the same in you, to let all the hard parts of you be treasured as a precious thing._

_Because you are. To me. To this town, to all those that have been protected by your blood for so long. Too long. But they don’t need your blood anymore, Stiles. They need you. I need you. And I’m sick of stopping myself from saying it._

_I need you._

_I need you, and I want to be near you always._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A year later and this idea stays with me, still. Unsure if there will be a follow up (or if I'll ever clarify exactly what kind of monsters Stiles hunts and what Derek's budget for bandages is), but for now, enjoy a short bout of feelings spilled in the name of all that is melodrama.


End file.
